A murder on the Appian way rsr-5

by Steven Saylor

  "Thank you, Great One."

  "If you wish, you may keep my guards at your house."

  "I would appreciate that, Great One. For how long?"

  "For the duration of the current crisis. There will be a resolution rather soon now, I think." He took a long sip of wine. "You know, Finder, you and your son are not the only ones who've faced danger in the last month or so. I've had my own small adventures, trying to keep my head attached to my shoulders. I dare say I could have used a man of your skills here in Rome to help me make sense of it all." "Adventures, Great One?"

  "There are those who say Milo is quite determined to do me in." "Really?"

  "Don't blanch, Finder! I won't assign you to investigate Milo's intentions. I have enough people looking into that already, and you deserve a rest. Still, I rather wish you had been here to help me deal with the episode of Licinius the butcher-priest."

  "I beg your pardon, Great One?"

  "Licinius; the man's a butcher and a priest. He's a popa, the one who actually cuts an animal's throat when the priests make a sacrifice; this Licinius does the bloody work while the others tend to the chanting and incense. But in his own time, he runs a butcher shop in the arcade along the Circus Maximus. Convenient, eh? I dare say some of the flesh that's been sacrificed to the gods one day ends up being sold to mere hungry mortals the next. But the fellow seems to be fairly respectable, for a priest. My dealings with him started a few days before the Senate voted to make me sole consul. Licinius showed up at my door one night, explaining who he was and begging to see me, for the sake of my own safety, he said. I had to think twice before admitting a professional slaughterer into my presence!"

  He took a sip of wine. "Licinius apparently has a regular clientele of bodyguards and gladiators from the Circus — his place is something of a gathering place for big meat-eaters. That day a group came in to gorge themselves on blood sausages and wine. They got very drunk, on the blood as much as the wine, Licinius said, and let it slip that they were part of a plot by Milo to assassinate me. When they realized the butcher was listening, they backed him against a wall and put a knife to his ribs, saying they'd kill him if he told anyone.

  "After he closed up his shop for the day he came here, quite distraught. I heard him out, then summoned Cicero, to see what he had to say in Milo's defence. Before Licinius was halfway through his story, Cicero launched into a blistering assault on the man's character. Called him a butcher masquerading as a priest, said he'd drawn more blood with his knife than any of the men he was accusing, said he was likely to be a paid assassin himself because he was bankrupt and desperate for money, and on and on.

  "Do you see the lapse in logic, Finder? How was it that Cicero happened to know so much about this obscure butcher from the

  Circus Maximus? How was it that he arrived at my house already armed with arguments against him — unless there really was a plot and Cicero already knew something about it? I don't accuse Cicero; I don't believe he would actively take part in a conspiracy to kill me. But I think Milo's gladiators must have warned Milo that the butcher had overheard them, and Milo must have mentioned it to Cicero, so that Cicero wasn't entirely surprised when he saw Licinius. When the butcher lifted up his tunic to show where the gladiator's dagger had been pushed against his ribs, Cicero brayed like a donkey. 'That little scratch? Do you expect us to be impressed with that? You want us to believe a big, strong gladiator made that tiny scratch? You've obviously used one of your wife's hairpins and scratched yourself and even then not much. For a butcher you've awfully squeamish about drawing any of your own blood!'

  "Then, while Cicero was still ranting, a man claiming to be a friend of the butcher showed up, wanting to see him. I let Licinius meet the fellow in the anteroom, but of course I had the anteroom watched, and a moment later a guard came in to tell me that Licinius's so-called friend was trying to bribe him to keep his mouth shut. Right here, under my own roof! That was quite enough for one day. I sent Licinius home under guard, I locked up the fellow who tried to bribe him — who was a mere errand runner and knew nothing — and I told Cicero to get out of my sight before I throttled him.''

  "And what came of all this?" I said.

  "Eventually I put the evidence before the Senate. When Milo spoke he claimed that he'd never seen most of the gladiators in question. Some of them he admitted to having owned at one time, but he said he had manumitted them long ago and was no longer responsible for them. As citizens, they couldn't be tortured for evidence, of course, and they kept their mouths shut. Milo suggested that Licinius the butcher had overheard a drunken fantasy and misunderstood most of it. I had no real proof to the contrary. And that's where the matter rests… for now." Pompey gazed at the city below. "Perhaps I could have used your help to get at the truth of the matter, Finder, but you weren't here."

  "Believe me, Great One, I would much rather have been here than where I was."

  "Yes, yes, I know that you faced great hardship. I don't dismiss your suffering. But I tell you, some days it isn't easy being Pompey the Great."

  I spent the next few days undisturbed. Eco and I passed the time by looking through every scroll arid scrap of parchment in our two houses, trying to find a match to the handwriting in the note to Bethesda. We were unsuccessful, but after a while, sorting through mementos and old correspondence became an end in itself, a nostalgic respite from the world. I needed this period of distraction. I was being reunited with my life. I had thought, falsely, that once I was back in Rome I could get on with my business without missing a step, but the experience in the pit had frightened and disturbed me more than I could acknowledge at the time. I found myself in a sort of twilight state, not yet ready to move on.

  From Bethesda I could not have asked for more comfort and support. She never once said a word of blame for my having placed myself in such great danger. She never called me a vain, thoughtless fool, as I had called myself a thousand times while I was in the pit. She saw that I needed her complete attention and unconditional affection, and she gave it to me. I began to think that I had married a goddess.

  Diana was more problematic. If she had been angry with me for putting her through so much worry, for making her feel abandoned and bereft, I might have understood, but her behaviour was more puzzling than that. She had always been inscrutable to me, even more so than her mother. Past experience had taught me, sometimes with a rude shock, that she was capable of thoughts and actions I could not possibly anticipate. So I tried not to worry overmuch about her seeming coolness, her brooding melancholy, her new habit of staring into the middle distance.

  Davus was equally perplexing. I had thought that my whispered conversation with him in the garden had put everything right and that he would stop skulking about and avoiding my gaze. Instead, this guilty behaviour only became worse. What was wrong with him?

  Just when I was beginning to feel fully settled again, and fully engaged in these family concerns, distraction arrived in the form of a red and white striped litter.

  It was inevitable that Clodia would call on me sooner or later, just as a summons from Pompey had been inevitable. There was even a part of me that had been looking forward to her arrival with a certain impatience. When Davus showed in the same haughty slave who had summoned me to her litter before, I tried to suppress a smile. Eco was away that day tending to his own affairs; what choice did I have but to go by myself? As I was leaving through the foyer, I met Bethesda coming in from outside. She had surely seen the litter and knew where I was going. I held my breath, but she only smiled as we passed and said, "Take care of yourself, husband." Then she stopped, pulled my face to hers, and gave me a long, deep kiss. She laughed as she walked away. Pompey's politics, Bethesda's sense of humour, my seventeen-year-old daughter's moods: what else did I need to add to the list of things I would never, ever comprehend?

  A moment later I was beside Clodia in her litter, moving through the streets of the Palatine. She took my hand and gave me a sidelong, soulful look.
"Gordianus, the rumours we've heard about you — so awful! Such an ordeal for your family! Tell me everything."

  I shook my head. "No. I'm in much too good a mood to spoil it with unpleasant talk."

  "Is it so painful for you to remember?" She drew her eyebrows together. It had to be a trick of the soft, filtered light that there was not a wrinkle on her face. "Gordianus, what are you grinning at?"

  "The light inside this litter. The warmth of your body. That elusive, unforgettable scent of yours. Men live and die, nations rise and fall, but some things never change."

  "Gordianus…"

  "What an extraordinary woman you are, Clodia. Shall I live and die and never make love to you?"

  "Gordianus!" Did she actually blush? No, that was impossible; Clodia was beyond blushing. It had to be a trick of the light, like the perfection of her skin. "Gordianus, I've come on behalf of Fulvia; you must know that." She tried to make her voice businesslike, but she couldn't help smiling.

  "Is that what you told my wife, when she looked into the litter to say hello to you?"

  "Of course. Then we talked about the weather. Don't you love an early spring?"

  "My wife is a goddess, you know. Any mortal woman would be insanely jealous of you."

  She tilted her head. "I agree, she must be divine; any man married to a mere mortal would have succumbed to me long ago. But I thought perhaps you considered me a goddess."

  "Oh, no, Clodia. I most definitely consider you a woman. There is no question of that…"

  We smiled at each other. Then our smiles wavered. A cloud obscured the sun, changing the light inside the litter. Neither of us looked away.

  "Is something about to happen, Gordianus?" said Clodia. I hardly recognized her voice.

  I took a deep breath and squeezed her hand. After a moment she pulled it away, able to read my touch. I shrugged. "If something were to happen between us, Clodia, then everything would change. The play of light inside this litter, the warmth of your body, that elusive, unforgettable scent. They would never be the same again, and I want them never to change."

  She seemed to tremble, then laughed softly. "Men!" she said, in a disparaging but not unfriendly way. For a moment I thought I had hurt her, and felt a strange thrill. Then I realized I was being absurd. A few moments alone with Clodia could bring out the peacock in any man.

  "What did you discover, then, on the Appian Way?" Her voice was casual again. "Anything new of importance?"

  "I hardly know where to start. We're almost at Fulvia's house, aren't we? Why don't you come in with me, and listen along with Fulvia?"

  The look on her face made, it clear that this was not possible. "Perhaps afterwards, on the way home, you can give me a private report," she said.

  "Yes, if you wish."

  Her litter deposited me on the steps leading up to the entrance. A guard showed me inside. The lofty rooms were still unfinished and haphazardly furnished. Without its master and its architect, the house of Clodius was frozen in time.

  The room where Fulvia and her mother awaited me was brighter and warmer than before, but Sempronia still kept a blanket over her lap and gave me an icy look. I sensed that there were others in the room, and felt a unexpected thrill of relief as Fulvia introduced them.

  "Gordianus, I think you already know FeUcia, keeper of the shrine of the Good Goddess on the Appian Way, and her brother Felix, attendant to the altar of Jupiter in Bovillae."

  "You took my advice, then?" I said to Felicia.

  "My brother and I discussed it for all of an hour, then gathered up what we needed and headed for Rome before dawn the next morning. We've hardly left this house since." Felicia was as striking as ever. Even as a suppliant in another woman's home she carried herself with the same intriguing, infuriating nonchalance.

  "I won't let them leave," said Fulvia. "They're too valuable as witnesses. And too vulnerable; Milo must have heard by now that there were witnesses to his crimes. Felix and Felicia are safe with me, and quite comfortable."

  "Quite, quite comfortable," agreed Felix, whose face looked fuller than I remembered it.

  "Witnesses?" I said. "Is there to be a trial?"

  "Oh, yes," said Fulvia. "There have been delays. Pompey had to reorganize the courts to his liking, and Milo has made a bigger spectacle of himself than he ever put on with his gladiators, stalling and blustering and using every kind of legal manoeuvre to wriggle his way out of the inevitable. But my nephew Appius is finally ready to bring the case. Once the charges are officially filed, it will be only a matter of days until we crush the bastard for good."

  Sempronia ground her teeth and spat on the floor.

  "We heard of your misfortune," said Fulvia.

  "Please, as I just told your sister-in-law, I have no more stomach for talking about it."

  "Good," said Fulvia bluntly. "I'm sick of mulling over misfortunes myself. It's the future I want to think about now. Felix, Felicia, please leave us." Felix crept out obsequiously. His sister followed behind him, flashing a very inappropriate smile at me.

  Fulvia made a face. "What trash those people are! My skin crawls every time they're near me."

  "The man eats like a pig," said Sempronia, "and the woman snoops everywhere, then pretends to be a halfwit when I catch her at it."

  "litter trash!" declared Fulvia.

  "I should think your late husband's wide circle of friends must have acquainted you with many people no better or worse," I said.

  "Watch your tongue, Finder!" snapped Sempronia.

  Fulvia waved a hand to caution her mother. "Gordianus is our guest. And we have unfinished business with him."

  "Do we?" I said.

  "I realize that you never formally agreed to the proposition I made

  to you. Yet you set out to investigate my husband's death, anyway.

  I suspect you must have been employed by a certain other person;

  how else to explain the presence of his bodyguards at your house?

  But in light of the fact that you directed valuable witnesses to come

  to my house for protection — "

  "I did it as much for their sake as for yours," I said:

  She paused, taken aback by my bluntness. "Maybe so, but the

  action still marks you as a friend to our cause. Did you accept my proposition, after all? Do you have anything to report to me?"

  "About Marc Antony, you mean?" "Yes."

  I hesitated. "What was the figure you promised?" She named the sum.

  "I'll settle for half that amount," I said. "To make up the difference, I want you to give me two of your slaves."

  She looked dubious. "If you're looking for more bodyguards, I should tell you that the best of my men are each worth considerably more than the sum I just named."

  "No, Fulvia, it's not protectors I'm looking for. I only want two small boys who reside at your Alban villa. Brothers; their names are Mopsus and Androcles."

  "What, the stableboys?"

  Sempronia smirked. "Is that how your tastes run, Finder? Clodia must be telling the truth when she says that you've never tried to touch her, despite all her rubbing up against you."

  I bit my tongue. I sighed and shrugged. "I can only say that I intend to put the boys to better use than you have, Fulvia. Did you realize that they saved your son's life when Milo and his men stormed the villa?"

  "What, because they happened to be in that secret passageway with him and managed to keep from blubbering?"

  "Is that how your son explained it? I think neither of you give the boys enough credit."

  "They're only stableboys, Gordianus."

  "Perhaps, but I'll wager that they grow up twice as clever and resourceful as anyone else in your household."

  Fulvia raised an eyebrow. "If you want the two slaves as part of your payment, Gordianus, you may have them."

  "Good. Shall I make my report?"

  "Yes."

  "Marc Antony had nothing whatever to do with your husband's death."
>
  "As simple as that?" "You have my word."

  "Your word?" said Sempronia icily. Fulvia began to pace before the open windows.

  "What else can I offer you? Certainty is a strange thing. Aristotle showed that no man can prove that a particular thing did not happen.

  I carried your question with me everywhere on the Appian Way, Fulvia, and into the pit where I resided for forty days, and even to Antony himself in Ravenna. I travelled back to Rome beside him, making my own judgment. Antony is completely innocent of spilling your husband's blood, despite his feelings for you."

  Sempronia looked disgusted. "The scoundrel seduced you, then, as well!"

  Fulvia glared at her. "Leave the room, Mother."

  Sempronia made a great show of gathering up her blanket and straightening her weary limbs. She did not deign to look at me as she left.

  For the first time, I found myself alone with Fulvia. I sensed a difference in her at once. When she stopped her pacing and turned towards me, her face seemed to belong to a different woman, younger and more vulnerable. "You're sure of this, Finder?"

  "Antony is innocent, of this crime at least."

  She smiled, but there were also tears in her eyes. What emotions raged inside her, always held in check to keep others from seeing? "There's hope, then. I may have a future, after all."

  "With Antony? But he's already married, to his cousin. Does he intend to divorce Antonia?"

  "No, that's impossible. A divorce now would destroy him. He's suggested that I consider marrying Curio instead."

  "His boyhood friend?"

  "His boyhood lover. You can say the word. I think of the two of them as fabled Greek warriors, like Achilles and Patroclus."

  "But would you settle for being Briseis?"

  She looked at me blankly. The allusion escaped her, and so failed to insult her. She was not the literary type.

  "Are you thinking of marriage again so soon?" I said.

  "Curio and I shall wait until an appropriate time."